I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

This is one of the speculative choices: Neal Stephenson’s and Nicole Galland’s “The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.” is one of those that I’ve been meaning to read, and I finally decided to bite the bullet. It’s supposed to be weird, post-whatever, and very… Neal Stephenson. I’ll let you know what I think of it.

More fully, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. It’s one of those books where, when they ask you what the genre is, you just kind of shrug. Cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk, hard SF, classic steampunk; you picks your number and you takes your chances, neighbor. Suffice it to say that it’s a cracking good read and has gotten even more cheerfully subversive since it was written twenty years ago, which takes some doing. Well worth your time, in other words.

…until midnight tonight (I think). I picked it up, and it’s, well, different. It’s good, but it’s different. Short version: moon explodes, slo-mo end of life on Earth, desperate attempt to get viable human breeding population in space, and so forth. Good stuff, with very little ‘get tens of thousands of people up there’ romanticism – but it’s, well, different.

I keep using that word, I know. I’m trying to find a better one, I swear. Anyway, I’ve been reading all day, so there’s that.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

When I write something that’s that good, believe me: I’ll let you know.

It’s a few years old, but the inside blurb promises that Sentry Peak is going to be the weirdest American Civil War novel that you’ll ever read; and while that may or may not be strictly true, it’s certainly up there. Take a look at the cover for confirmation of that. First of a series.

I keep forgetting that not everybody who reads me shares my tastes in fiction. I actually just had this brought home to me in another venue, in fact.

So… Interface, by Neal Stephenson & J Frederick George. It was written fifteen years ago, and it predicted about six or seven things about modern politics that are kind of important now*. You really should pick up a copy.

Seriously.

Moe Lane

*Ranging from the increasing manipulation of demographic data to the fishbowl nature of modern politics to how high-definition television is going [to] gut our current crop of politicians.

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

From Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash, which is good reading for anybody interested in the intersection of information technology, Sumerian / Babylonian mythology and the franchise system. Well, it’s good for everybody else, too.

Anyway. Universal truth, there – at least, it’s resonated with every guy I’ve ever shown it to – but there’s not really much you can do with the information, is there? Except wait for individual males to get past being 25, I suppose.